CFR and Berkley Center Webinar: The Future of Strategic Religious Engagement in U.S. Foreign Policy

Why It Matters

Without coordinated religious engagement, the United States loses a critical lever for conflict resolution and development; rebuilding SRE capacity can improve policy outcomes and global stability.

Key Takeaways

• US strategic religious engagement capacity dismantled under Trump administration.
• 2023 policy marked first agency-wide religious engagement strategy release.
• Berkeley Center’s SRE hub preserves documents, interviews, and training resources.
• New ARPAC country profiles offer concise religion‑conflict analysis for policymakers.
• Panel urges rebuilding inter‑agency religious literacy to inform future foreign policy.

Summary

The Council on Foreign Relations and Georgetown University's Berkeley Center hosted a webinar to assess the future of strategic religious engagement (SRE) in U.S. foreign policy, noting that recent administrative changes have stripped the government of dedicated capacity to work with faith actors.

Panelists traced SRE’s evolution from early U.S. Institute of Peace initiatives in the 1980s, through USAID’s 2002 Faith‑Based Center, the 2013 White House NSC strategy, and the landmark 2023 agency‑wide SRE policy, before highlighting the dismantling of USAID, USIP, and State Department offices under the Trump administration.

Melissa Nazelle outlined the Berkeley Center’s SRE hub, which curates a digital repository, oral‑history interviews, a blog series, and the ARPAC country‑profile briefs—already released for Bosnia, Myanmar, El Salvador, with Sudan and Syria forthcoming—emphasizing that faith‑based actors are often “the first in and the last out” of peace and development efforts.

The conversation concluded that restoring inter‑agency religious literacy, preserving institutional memory, and providing concise analytical tools are essential for future diplomatic, development, and security initiatives, suggesting that a revitalized SRE capacity could significantly enhance U.S. foreign‑policy effectiveness.

Original Description

David Hunsicker, Pennsylvania state director of Make Voters the Donors; Melissa Nozell, strategic religious engagement fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; and Knox Thames, senior fellow at Pepperdine University; discuss how the U.S. government and civil society partners can navigate the complex role that religion plays in global affairs and to effectively engage religious actors in advancing diplomatic, development, and defense priorities. Peter Mandaville, professor of government and politics and director of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, moderates the discussion.

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